COSMETIC SURGERY OFTEN LEAVES ITS MARK

"My marks and scars I carry with me," John Bunyan wrote in the Shepherd Boy's Song.

So do some people who have undergone cosmetic surgery.

Face lifts, tummy tucks, and breast implants and reductions, while often improving appearance, leave serious scars that fade but last a lifetime, Dr. Ruben Ballesteros said Friday.

"It's not just like a trip to the beauty parlor," Ballesteros told a group of primarily middle-aged women gathered at Washington's Convention Center for a seminar on cosmetic surgery at Health Care Expo '85.

But Ballesteros also stressed that cosmetic surgery can help correct deformities such as unevenly sized breasts, help repair damage from cancer or significant weight loss, and greatly ease the physical suffering of women whose breasts are too large and who have abnormal deposits of fat in the abdomen and hips.

Even vanity surgeries, such as face lifts, may significantly benefit a patient by improving appearance and self-confidence.

But operations that involve incisions mean scars. Face lifts, for instance, beside making the face look 5 to 10 years younger, leave approximately four-inch scars on the sides of the face.

Ballesteros said that much of the scar is hidden by the hairline. Many women effectively camouflage the scars in front of the ears with their hairstyle or with earrings, he said.

But in the slides Ballesteros showed of profiles of women who had the surgery, the scar was visible to the eye looking for it.

How bad the scar looks often depends on the patient's type of skin, Ballesteros said.

Tummy tucks, in which excess skin and fat are removed from the midsection, produce scars that run all the way across the belly just above the pubic area. Ballesteros said the incision was low enough to be covered by a bikini.

Ballesteros said that tummy tucks were not the best cure for what he called the abdominal apron, a stomach that hangs over the body's trunk. He recommended a good diet and exercise.

Surgery to increase the size of the bosom leaves scars just underneath the fullness of the breasts and may be hidden by the breasts lapping over them.

In this operation, the breasts are opened below the nipples and silicon gel implants are placed in pockets just over the muscles.

Ballesteros called the scarring left by surgery to reduce the breasts "formidable." The operation leaves scars around the nipples, underneath the breasts and on the sides.

For this surgery, tissue is removed from incisions on the sides of the breasts, the nipples are lifted up and the breasts are actually restructured.